Mercy Me (20 page)

“Esmeralda, you got a nice tiller there,” he said, taking off his hat. “What're you going to do with it?”

“I bought it for Elijah,” I said. “I'm keeping it here until we find a way for him to haul it around town.”

“I see,” he said. “Do you mind if I hang around a while?”

“No. Everybody else is. Looks like the whole town of Live Oaks is here.”

He twisted his hat in his hands. “Ain't there something I can do? I just need to be around people right now.”

He was one whipped puppy.

“How's your sleeping?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It's off and on.”

“Does Dr. Elsie know?”

“Not yet.”

“You need to tell her, Horace.”

“I know.”

“Come on. I'll fix you something to eat.”

There were three kinds of potato salad, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, okra and tomatoes—no end to the stuff people had brought. I wasn't hungry, but I figured it might encourage him to eat if I fixed me a plate.

At first he just nibbled, sipped his drink, and said I made good ice tea. I got him to talking about other things, and little by little he cleaned his plate.

After lunch I asked Clara to tell the women I was on my way to the funeral home and that they could meet me there. Thelma rode with me, and the others came in their cars. We all got there about the same time and piled out to gather in the parking lot. Boyd Jones looked out the door at us and his mouth dropped open. You'd think the Russians were coming!

With Jones in the lead, we trooped into the casket room and stayed in a group, examining all the big ones he wanted us to see. Mercy me, those fancy ones were decked out with chrome enough for a fifties Cadillac.
Boyd Jones wore gloves to impress us with how grand they were and opened the lids so carefully you'd think royalty lay inside.

After we all had a good look at everything displayed, we huddled and made a unanimous decision. Not one of them was what we wanted, so we headed for the door.

Seeing we were leaving, Jones got very excited. “Wait!” he yelled. “I got something in the back room you may be interested in.”

We trooped to the back room, where smaller, wooden caskets were lined up in a row. “These are the models we use when there's a cremation.”

Well, they looked fine to me. I checked the prices and saw they were much less expensive. I looked around at the ladies, and without exception they approved of the model I liked.

“We'll take this one,” I said, pointing to the casket that had the nicest grain to it. “That is, if your other charges are agreeable.”

We followed Boyd Jones into his office, and he scrounged up enough chairs for all of us to sit around his desk. He punched his calculator and read out prices. Beads of perspiration wet his forehead, and it was not a hot day. Thelma knew just what to say to get him to change his figures and bring them down to a reasonable price. We must've spent an hour in there, telling him what we would pay and what we would not pay. Before I signed the papers, I made eye contact with each W.W. to make sure I had the support of every one of them.

I must say, we left that man dripping with sweat. But as we came out of that place, we were smiling.

I put the key in the ignition. “Thelma,” I said, “Boyd Jones is one crook we have got the best of. Splurgeon had men like him in mind when he said, ‘A white glove often hides a dirty hand.'”

By late afternoon, Pastor Osborne came to the house. He showed me the bulletin to make sure it was okay. “I figured we wouldn't have a viewing, right?”

I nodded and read on. The service would be at eleven o'clock the next morning. The Apostolic deacons were listed as pallbearers.

Pastor Osborne said he and Lucy had talked to the children about their mother going to heaven and that Carlos had seemed to be upset. “Lucy said he was asking for Elijah, so we took him down there. Elijah held him on his lap, petted him, gave him a buckeye to put in his pocket. After a while Carlos slipped off Elijah's lap, took him by the hand, and led him down to the creek. They watched the minnows darting in the water and tried to catch one. Before long, he was okay.”

After Pastor Osborne left, I was plum dizzy with so many people coming in and going out, cars parked up and down the street. I went in my room and closed the door.

I didn't wake up until the next morning.

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It was such a sweet service. The church was full when I arrived with Betty, Lucy, Elijah, and the children in my car. (Me and the W.W.s had saved money by cutting out the limo service Boyd Jones had insisted was necessary for a first-class funeral.) Those three little ones were dressed in new outfits and new shoes, and Angelica's hair was curled in ringlets framing her precious face.

As we stood waiting in the vestibule, I noticed that the ceiling fan was stirring the air and all the windows were open. But with so many people packed in there, it was still humid. Angelica, sucking her thumb, was clinging to Betty's skirt, so Betty picked her up and held her.

Clara's granddaughter was up front in the church playing something sad on her violin. When she finished, Mabel did her best to get something going on the organ, but it didn't sound like the organ was cooperating. Mabel
never took organ lessons, and playing by ear don't always work good.

Elmer ushered Betty, the children, Lucy, Elijah, and me to our pew up front. Then Boyd Jones, dressed in a swallowtail coat, ruffled shirt, and string tie, escorted the deacons in, and they filed into the front pew on the other side. Soon the pastor came down the aisle, carrying the cross and calling out the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Those words always stir my soul; that day, they made me so glad, I felt like shouting.

Boyd was too cheap to hire an assistant to help bring in the casket. Or maybe an assistant was one of the corners Thelma had cut when we were haggling with the man. Anyway, Boris helped him bring in the casket and arrange the spray on top.

The spray of pink roses was from the W.W.s, and Beatrice's basket of gladiolus was at one end of the casket. At the other end was a big bunch of my hydrangeas some of the women had arranged. There were other arrangements too—mostly from whatever was blooming in backyards and on fences. I had ordered four red roses, and they were in a florist vase setting on the piano. Roses are not cheap. I had arranged with Boris to use them in the service as a nice final touch.

Pastor Osborne opened the service with a short prayer thanking the Lord for making it possible for people in Live Oaks to go to heaven. Then he had us sing “Amazing Grace.” Nowadays you don't have to be a Christian to know the song by heart. People in Apostolic Bible love to harmonize on that one, and poor Mabel got so confused
she couldn't keep up. In the middle of the third verse she quit trying.

Pastor Osborne never gives us one of those mail-order funerals—the cut-and-dried kind that preachers read out of a black book. For Maria's service he read the words of Jesus: “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father, who is in heaven.”

He closed the Bible and talked about Maria's devotion to her children, how she did everything she could to care for Carlos, Rios, and Angelica. Then he paused, looked down at Elijah sitting with the boys on either side of him, and smiled. “When this little family was living in a boxcar, the Lord used his servant Elijah. When Maria and the children needed food, he went to the store for them. Since Maude died, Elijah has had to walk everywhere he goes, so a trip to the store meant walking to and from town.

“But I reckon the most important help he gave was watching over the children when Maria couldn't. And when she got so sick it looked like she might die, Elijah went for help. It's no wonder that Maria's children are devoted to him. As you can see, Carlos and Rios have bonded with Elijah.” Then, speaking directly to Elijah, he said, “Elijah, Betty and I want you to know that you will always be a member of our little family.”

The awesome truth in back of Maria's coming to Live Oaks was probably something new for most of the people listening, but I had thought of it many times. Pastor Osborne explained that the Lord, in his providence, had
brought Maria and the children to Live Oaks and to the Lord's people of Apostolic Bible because he trusted us.

The pastor's face just lit up as he talked on. “What a wonderful thing it is to know that the Lord is trusting us with three of his little lambs. Let us covenant together—those of us who are officers and workers in this church, grandparents, parents, and young people—to live holy lives before these children, that they might see Jesus in us and come to love him as we do.

“We are not perfect people, but gross sin in my life or yours can keep a child from coming to the Lord. Jesus said, ‘It is impossible but that offenses will come; but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.'”

I could hear snifflings in back of us, and I figured that was a good thing. Maybe folks were ashamed of the way they'd been living.

The pastor then read a pretty poem about stepping onshore and finding it heaven, and I liked hearing him say he was confident that Maria had stepped on that shore, because she was trusting Christ as her Savior from sin. “We were all praying for Maria,” he said, “but were frustrated because we didn't speak Spanish and couldn't talk to her about the Lord. But God had gone before as he always does, and Lucy was here to speak her language and tell Maria about Jesus.”

Lucy tucked her head and looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

Well, the pastor knows me well enough not to mention my name from the pulpit, and he didn't this time either, although he thanked the W.W.s and all those who had helped to love Maria into the kingdom.

At the close of the service, the hymn was announced, and Mabel tried to get the organ going. When she couldn't, Boris picked up the tune, and we all sang “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” That hymn always makes my heart tender toward all those hard-to-get-along-with brothers and sisters in Christ.

As we sat there waiting for the young people to remove the flowers and take them out to the grave, I could see Mabel Elmwood up there at the organ so mortified her face was all primped up, ready to bust out crying.
I could be a little nicer to her,
I thought.

When everything was in order at the burial site, Elmer ushered us outside. We had only a short distance to walk to the graveyard. The Jones funeral tent was set up out there with chairs enough for us who were serving as the family.

Pastor Osborne stood with his Bible open, waiting until the people had gathered around the tent. Then he began reading, “‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not for such is the kingdom of heaven.'” Closing the Bible, he told us, “I'm looking down at the faces of three little children, and their beautiful dark eyes are looking up at me with that innocence all of us had when we were their age. . . . Our innocence was short-lived, wasn't it? Growing older, we sinned in many ways, didn't we? Fortunately, there is a way whereby we can be made innocent again, as innocent as
Carlos, Rios, and Angelica are today. That innocence is a gift. It comes to us when we transfer all our guilt onto Jesus. He takes the judgment, and we are acquitted, declared innocent once again. We stand before God the Father, not in our sins but in the righteousness of Christ.”

Then Pastor Osborne reached down and took Angelica in his arms. Holding her, he walked a few steps back and forth, giving everyone an opportunity to see her. Then he quoted more of Jesus' words: “‘Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. . . . Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. . . . And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.'”

Before he put Angelica down, he motioned to the boys to stand up. “Maria's children have learned a song they're going to sing for us.”

Lucy placed Angelica between Carlos and Rios, and the boys held their sister's hands. I was afraid they would be too shy to sing, but once Lucy got them started, their sweet little voices began to sing in Spanish “Jesus Loves Me.”

Boris removed the roses from the vase.

I reached in my bottomless pit for tissues, pulled out a handful, and handed them to him so he could wrap the stems. He handed one rose to each of the children and helped them lay the roses on their mother's casket. Then Boris gave Carlos the fourth rose. Lucy whispered something to him, and Carlos handed the rose to Betty. Betty hugged and kissed him.

As far as I could tell, there was not a dry eye in the crowd.

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